Their Freefall At Last by Julie Olivia

47

Ruby

I wake to the sound of my front door opening. My first thought is, Yikes, Bennett’s mom sure knows how to party. I didn’t expect her to get back so late, but she’s younger than me in spirit.

But my second thought, as I roll over on the couch, trying to curl closer to the cushions to block out the porch light and bypass Theo’s socked feet lying next to my ear, is, Wow, that’s afamiliar, salty coconut scent and—

A hand covers my mouth. I let out a tiny squeal.

“Shh, Rubes, it’s me.”

I blink up at Bennett and his totally-not-a-serial-killer face. His eyebrows are tilted in. His frown at one hundred percent.

He releases my mouth and puts a finger up to his lips, jerking his chin toward the front door.

I look to Theo, still passed out with one arm hanging off the couch. Easing myself up, I grab my phone and tiptoe across the floor, laden with our blankets, pillows, and DVD cases from the makeshift girls’ night. Theo suggested we still celebrate my birthday, so we made do with what we had. It was exciting, but not as much as it could have been with the man I’m following now.

I close the door behind me once we’re both on the porch, and together, we walk to the end of the driveway, far from the house where Theo might be able to hear.

“What the hell, Bennett?” I hiss-whisper.

“Sorry. I didn’t wanna wake anyone.”

“Well, you woke me up.”

“Yeah,” he says with a chuckle. “That was kinda the point.”

I give a nonthreatening eye roll as he crosses his arms, rolls his neck, and starts to pace the driveway.

In that moment, I remember that we’re kind of fighting, but also not. I didn’t go to our most important birthday, and he never responded to my text.

I cross my arms over my chest, trying to stave off the summer humidity that is eerily cool tonight.

“Why are you here?” I ask. “What time is it?”

He stops, blinks at me, and inhales. “Two. Ish.”

“Two?”

“Rubes, you didn’t show up.”

The night air gets sucked from my lungs as I watch Bennett’s shoulders slouch and his eyebrows stitch in.

“No,” I state, “I didn’t.”

He nods, tugging his hair from the leather strap before winding it back into a bun once more. I used to love watching him do that, but now, not so much. It means he’s stressed.

He fastens the tie back. “Why didn’t you come?”

I curl my lips in. I consider for half a second telling him that Jolene requested my absence, but I don’t. That’s not fair to anyone involved.

So, I give a small shrug instead and say, “I think we both know what this birthday meant.”

Bennett lowers down to the concrete, lifting his knees up and burying his head in his palms. He rubs them down his cheeks, tugging at the skin before letting it go.

“I thought we were doing good, Rubes.”

“We were,” I argue. “We are.” I sit down beside him, crossing my legs, one over the other. “This was just a big milestone. It’s thirty, y’know? A bump in the road of life.”

He snorts out a laugh through his nose and shakes his head. “A bump?”

“Yeah. A bump.” I tug a weed out from between the crack in my driveway. “That’s the best analogy I got right now.”

Bennett grunts in agreement.

My phone buzzes. I see Michael’s name flash in too-big letters. I flip the phone over so that the screen faces the concrete instead. Bennett’s eyes snag on the device once it’s flipped, and they don’t break away.

“Who are you texting this late?” he asks.

“Honestly?” I add with a laugh. “You don’t want to know.”

He nods again before running palms over his face once more. He lets out a low groan, almost a growl, and then an irritated exhale.

“God, you have a boyfriend, and I don’t even know about it. How out of touch am I?”

“Well, he’s not exactly a boyfriend,” I answer. “He’s a … pseudo-man-thing.”

Bennett chuckles, resting his forearms on his knees, his feet spread apart on the concrete. And he’s smiling. I missed seeing how happy he could look. I missed the feeling that comes with being alone with my best friend—the little secrecy of inside jokes and twenty-year bits that always seems to wrap its way around us, like a blanket of solitude.

Well, solitude, save for the low music coming from my neighbors’ house. I bet they’re winding down from a party.

Is that Celine Dion?

“Why are you here?” I ask.

Bennett’s eyes dart away from mine. His shoe scrubs against the concrete. And in that moment, he’s almost a kid again. The little boy ripping the name tag at Honeywood. Me and my pirate in our little bubble of friendship.

I giggle. “You wake me up in the middle of the night, and you can’t even—”

“I’m here because I can’t see you anymore.”

The bubble of friendship bursts.

I think I have tunnel vision. Or maybe the night gets darker or the pit in my stomach gets deeper and hollower. I’m falling. No, the world is spinning too much.

My thoughts are no longer coherent as I croak out, “What?”

Bennett clears his throat. “We can’t hang out anymore.”

I can’t hang out with Bennett.

My Bennett.

My pirate.

Somehow, I find myself laughing.

Bennett’s eyes widen. “Uh, Ruby?”

I laugh because the sentence doesn’t feel real. I’ve got to be living in some goofy fun-house version of my life. Maybe someone with a camera will jump out of the bushes and tell me I’m the star of a new reality show. Honestly, being embarrassed on national television would be better than this.

But the more he looks at me, the more real it becomes.

My brain feels stretched thin. My body too tight, too uncomfortable, like this skin isn’t even my own. My emotions are playing tug-of-war, pulling at the left side of the brain, then the right until I think my head is in pain.

But I can’t stop laughing.

“It’s not funny,” Bennett says.

I laugh more.

“Rubes.”

Then, through the laughs, I finally start to cry. I’m Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I’m not sure when the change happens or when my eyes started to hurt.

Bennett puts his arm on my lower back, and I lean into it. He wraps his hand tight around my waist and tugs me in, just like he used to. But the second my nose presses against his shoulder, breathing in his stupid coconut scent with not a single hint of strawberry, I choke out another laughing sob.

“I don’t know if I should be concerned or not,” he jokes.

I laugh harder and sniff. “Very.”

Bennett then barks out a laugh, too, but his comes with a sniffle. It’s wetter than it should be for his normal laugh. Mine probably is too.

“I’m sorry,” he says, burying his head against mine.

“Don’t be.”

His palm strokes up my side, then back down. The thick mess of his hair hangs down like a curtain between us—the same one I loved as a teen—trapping in our heated breaths and heavy exhales, mixed with choked tears.

“I’m sorry I got us to this point,” I murmur.

“What? It’s not your fault. What are you talking about?”

“No, it is my fault, isn’t it? You offered to love me three years ago. And if I’d said yes, maybe we wouldn’t be here.”

“We wanted different things.”

“We did.”

Bennett doesn’t answer for a moment, and for a second, I think maybe I stepped into an unspoken hallowed ground. We never speak about that day. I pull back and watch as he chews his shaking lip and shakes his head back and forth.

“And, Rubes … I wasn’t offering to love you. Three years ago, I was simply telling you the inevitable. Because what I felt for you? It was inescapable, Ruby. I loved you more than anyone could ever love another person. And it would have been nice to have it back, sure, but it didn’t matter what you told me. It wasn’t an offer. It was a confession. And I will never ever take that back. You understand?”

Past tense.

Loved.

I nod. He nods back. And I can’t bear to look at him any longer, so I lean into his chest, letting his thick, tattooed arm wrap back around me, looking down at the pink string barely holding on to his wrist.

“So, this is it, huh?” I ask.

“I mean, you’re still invited to my wedding.”

I laugh. “Oh, thank God. I was really worried about that one.”

Bennett lets out a wet chuckle, and I follow with my very own.

“Happy birthday, Pirate,” I whisper.

My former best friend nuzzles his head against mine.

“Happy birthday, Parrot.”

Distantly, my partying neighbors switch the music to Whitney Houston. Because of course they do.

I sniffle out laughter, and so does he.

“If this were a commercial, what would we call this album?” Bennett asks.

“Fall of Friendship.”

“Autumn themed. Nice. But also very dramatic.”

“Oh well. I’m feeling a little dramatic today.”

“Me too.”

We sit there, at the end of my driveway, huddled together, listening to my neighbors blast Michael Bolton. Boyz II Men. Mazzy Star.

And that is how a childhood friendship dies—with a thirtieth birthday under the soundtrack of ’90s romance ballads.